If You Know How To Fuel and Train Your Body, Where You Are Matters Less.™

September 17, 2018October 30, 2018

Workout Edge: Get Healthy Shoulders By Doing This.

Happy Monday. Last week we went over the best slow releasing carb to consume in the morning for breakfast, providing you with sustained morning fuel minus the post-breakfast lethargy and crash. This week we’re back to gaining a workout edge, by learning how to get – and/or keep – your shoulders healthy.

If you haven’t laid a solid foundation, how can you ever expect to build a solid house?

Whenever I hear people complain about shoulder problems, then proceed to ask me for advice, I usually tell them one thing…

“Your mobility probably sucks.”

Go into any gym and you’re sure to find vanity lifters. I say “vanity” because fitness culture is now becoming the “trendy” thing to do, meaning among the real, hardcore lifters, you’ll always find the ones that do it for purely aesthetic reasons or simply, to see and be seen in the gym.

Working out is not a beauty contest, it is a science.

A science that like a patient disciple, you learn about…learn from…and learn to respect, year after year.

With that science, comes methodology…but I’ll bring things back to layman’s terms for now.

I’ve realized over the years that most people know about weight lifting, stretching, cardio, conditioning, and calisthenics training. They understand the importance of stretching after a warmup and workout, and never stretching cold.

But talk about mobility and stability to someone and more often than not, you’ll see a glazed look come over their eyes and face, almost as if mobility is some optional thing in the art of working out.

So here’s the quick and dirty explanation of what mobility means for your shoulders:

If you give a crap about being able to do something as simple as lift your arms over your head with ease, you will care about mobility.

If you give a crap about increasing some real size, strength, and conditioning in your shoulders and linked muscles, you will care about mobility.

If you give a crap about lasting longer in hand-to-hand combat, you absolutely care about mobility.

Mobility is essentially what your shoulders, wrists, ankles, and hips are designed for – having healthy movement in daily activities, without injury.

They’re all tied into each other, meaning you won’t truly benefit if you take care of one, but not the others. Mobility, however, can improve your lifts, keep you loose during sparring, and makes sure you don’t wind up like a younger version of the life alert lady.

So when you think about it, many people do neglect this underrated and misunderstood attribute of the body – but generally those same people are the ones that scream “my shoulders are too messed up!” when you suggest anything remotely sensible as a solution.

Be the sensible one.

Ditch the bro science, and take a moment to assess yourself.

How good is your flexbility? Range of motion? How stable are you when it comes to being in the hole during a barbell back squat? Can you do the military press, or overhead tricep extensions with zero pain and strict form?

If you have to think twice on any of these questions, now’s the time to acknowledge what you’ve been neglecting, and start focusing on the details you never deemed as important. Then go ahead and work towards improving your shoulder mobility, and contact me if you’d like to share what you’ve discovered.